Hillary Faults Feds For 9/11 Health Risks
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton ripped the Bush administration's response to Sept. 11 health risks, but did not question the actions of the most prominent Sept. 11 figure, Rudy Giuliani, who like her, happens to be running for president.
"Many who were exposed could have been protected," Clinton said Wednesday as she began the Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee hearing into the government's response to the toxic dust and debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center. "We can clear the air here in Washington and clear the way to help those affected and hold accountable those who did let New Yorkers and Americans down."
Clinton, a Democrat, and other New York lawmakers have long faulted the Environmental Protection Agency for providing assurances in the days after the 2001 terror attacks that the air contamination was not a public health risk.
A subsequent internal investigation determined that those assurances were not based on scientific data and were issued partly at the direction of the White House.
The head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, James Connaughton, defended the administration's handling of the cleanup.
Read more about the health crisis stemming from 9/11.
"In all instances, federal agencies acted with the best available data at the time and updated their communications and actions as new information was obtained," Connaughton told the panel.
Connaughton insisted that the reassuring pronouncements were accurate.
"All of us were relieved," he said. "We feared that there would be quite substantial amounts of asbestos that people might be directly exposed to. As it happens the data was showing that was not the case."
Even as Clinton pressed federal officials, she steered clear of challenging New York's response, which was led by then-mayor Giuliani.
Clinton currently leads the Democratic field of 2008 presidential candidates. Giuliani in the Republican front-runner.
In two Senate hearings into Sept. 11 health issues, Clinton has avoided challenging Giuliani's record on the subject. Many of those with the worst post-Sept. 11 illnesses are city employees, including police officers and firefighters.
When asked after the hearing why she had not examined Giuliani's role, Clinton first said that would be handled by a separate House hearing next week. Told that hearing would not address the city's role, Clinton said she was focusing on what federal agencies have done.
"For years, everybody has basically been pointing fingers at everybody else," she said. "We are attempting to try to first, in our focus, deal with the federal agencies."
Citing recent studies about the health effects of Sept. 11 contamination, Clinton warned that the casualties of the attacks will continue to mount for years.
"Many people will die as a direct result of their exposures," she said.
A study of more than 20,000 people by Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York concluded that in the months and years after the attacks, 70 percent of ground zero workers suffered some sort of respiratory illness.
A separate medical study released last month found that rescue workers and firefighters contracted sarcoidosis, a serious lung-scarring disease, at a rate more than five times higher than the years before the attacks.
Since the attacks, independent government reviews have faulted the EPA's handling of the immediate aftermath of the attacks and the agency's long-term cleanup program for nearby buildings.
Clinton and other New York lawmakers have sought to pressure the agency to do more to clean apartment buildings in lower Manhattan. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes ground zero, will hold a Sept. 11 health hearing next week to question former EPA administrator Christine Whitman.